Former South African captain Graeme Smith said that current Indian captain Rohit Sharma needs to refresh himself as he attempts to come out of a poor form. As per Smith, once Rohit gets some runs under his belt, he should be okay. However, his performance has come under the scanner after he failed to do well in the World Test Championship (WTC) final against Australia. Earlier, he had a poor show in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 as well.
In an interview with Times of India, Smith said: “One of the biggest challenges of a captain is your own personal performance. The pressure of a leader never goes away. Rohit probably needs to just refresh. His own form hasn’t been probably at a level consistently. We look at the IPL over a number of years now and obviously the WTC final…he is having a bit of a rough patch and often that personal performance can just settle things down a little bit. No one is criticizing his captaincy or leadership style. It’s just obviously on the personal performance side, if he can get some really good scores behind him, it takes a lot of that pressure away.”
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However, Rohit Sharma was dismissed for 15 and 43 as India lost to Australia by 209 runs in the WTC final at The Oval. While many asked for a change in captaincy, Smith said that change must happen gradually as well.
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“Whenever there’s a failure, it’s always the senior players that take the most heat. That’s always been a natural thing, if you go back (in years). I guess that’s up for the Indian selectors to decide in terms of when they start to integrate (youth). If you take out three, four or five of your highest-performing players for a long period of time, all that experience…talent can’t just replace that overnight. There needs to be a slow integration and a plan for these things. Those are also the players that got you to the WTC final. They’ve performed around the world for a consistent period of time to get India to the final. So, based on one game, to criticize them and throw them out, it’s very tough,” he concluded.
